Wednesday, March 5, 2014

When simplicity collided with elegance: Tissot Le Locle Automatic

I always have a soft spot for Tissot ever since my first Tissot watch..... For me, the name Tissot is synonym with Affordable, Reliable, Practical and Quality....

I basically hijacked this watch from a friend's wrist. The very same friend, I kidnapped the Sea-Gull 55th Anniversary watch from. Well, please do not pity him! He is well off enough to buy himself some more new watches. That is good for me, as I probably can snatch more watches from him.

Here is a huge watch box with all the documents regarding this watch.......... Nothing too fancy, nothing ordinary also...... At the bottom of the box is a drawer that housed all the papers.

For a special reason, I always love watches with Arabic numeric dial. That partially maybe due to my first watch was with Arabic numeric dial. It was before I went to school..... Sadly, I had lost track of that watch long ago.....

From any angle, this is a very classical and elegant watch. At least, that is what Tissot's designers had in mind when they launched this Le Locle line.

"The name Le Locle seems to be a reliable ingredient of success. As well as being the name of Tissot's home and heritage, nestled in the Swiss Jura Mountains, it is the name of a hugely popular automatic watch family. The models display exquisite elegance with details such as Roman numerals and a traditional Le Locle signature which complete the picture of classical chic...." stated on Tissot's webpage.

This is a 39mm in diameter dress watch. The case is polished 316L stainless steel with PVD yellow gold coating. It has a scratch resistant sapphire glass. The dial is ivory colour with gold Arabic numeric hour markers. The feuille hour and minutes hand added nostalgia to the general appearance of the watch. This watch has a small date window at its 3 o'clock position.

The oversized crown is signed with a big T character. The side of the case is brush polished.

This case is nicely contoured and is very comfy to wear on the wrist. Signed with the big T, the gold plated, adjustable deployment clasp holds the brown coloured leather strap tightly onto your wrist.

The Le Locle has a well decorated stainless steel caseback. The caseback is engraved with patterns, Tissot 1853, and vital informations like water resistant to 30M, Automatic, Sapphire Crystal and so on. The caseback has exhibit windows that display portion of the movement.

The Le Locle uses ETA 2824-2 movement, which features hacking and hand winding, along with a quick-set date. ETA 2824-2 is a 25 jewels automatic movement that oscillates at 28,800 bph. This movement is non-decorated apart from its gold plated rotor. The rotor is signed with "Tissot 1853" and "Swiss Made 25 Jewels". Worth mentioning, is that the newer 2014 Le Locle Automatic Chronometer is using the same ETA 2824-2 movement with also no decoration or polishing. Maybe that is the key that Tissot managed to make its watches affordable to all.

Pen off this post with a beautiful scenic photo of Le Locle and a paragraph I taken from Tissot's 2014 catalogue....

No matter what the watch, it will always bear the Tissot signature of "Innovators by Tradition" and they have all been created with you in mind! wrote Francois Thiebaud, President of Tissot.